


The Girl I Thought I Left Behind

by TheColorBlue



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Depression, F/M, Joan of Arc - Freeform, Pining, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-05 04:06:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1804702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Bucky had wanted was for Steph to be happy.<br/>And then the war had come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Stephanie “Steph” Rogers was the girl that Bucky looked after. When they’d been growing up, and when Steph had been sick all the time, and it’d always been just the two of them—Bucky looked after her. 

Bucky always told folks: _Steph is practically a sister to me._

 _She’s like my sister._

And because people could tell that Steph was weak and asthmatic, they didn’t give the two of them the same kind of trouble they might have had Steph been healthier. You know. The funny stuff going on. The pointed looks, and Steph should have been rooming it with another girl, other women, there were plenty of boarding houses or apartments around, the respectable thing to do instead of living with the strapping young man that was James Buchanan Barnes. 

Then the pair of them started inching into their twenties, and the gossip really started circulating in the building. 

Bucky knew all about it. Of course. It was stuff about how Bucky had resigned himself to looking after his sickly foster sister for the rest of his life. Confirmed bachelorhood for him, spinsterhood for the Rogers girl. What a shame. What a pity. That kind of thing. 

It was true that Bucky didn’t date. He had very narrowly aligned priorities in life. Also he had started hunting around for good boyfriend-potential-husband-breadwinner material for Steph, or making the motions of it, but Steph always stuck her chin up in the air and said, “Forget what people are saying, Bucky. For Pete’s sake. Not every gal has to get married like that, lickety-split! I want to live a little before I tie myself down.”

When Steph wasn’t sick, she was taking art classes with the Art Students League inbetween doing secretarial work. 

She was always talking about all the exciting new subjects she was studying and also the other female artists taking classes, and how amazing she was finding this opportunity. Bucky always just smiled and let her talk, on the uncommon night that they actually sat together for supper. He thought: Steph had always been an odd duck, but maybe God made the artist-types odder by default. Mostly, he just let her talk about whatever she wanted, and he listened, maybe laying in a joke here or there himself, but mostly he listened. They didn’t have meals often together because they were busy. Steph had work and classes. Bucky had work too.

Maybe it was better that way. 

Bucky worked hard so that he could pay rent and help pay for Steph’s medicine, and look after Steph when her health didn’t allow her to look after herself. 

Sometimes he thought to himself: he wanted to look after her for the rest of his life. 

But then he’d remember the look she could get on her face, the tight set of her jaw: whenever he’d tried to hook her up with a nice, respectable fella. 

Steph was twenty-two years old and Bucky didn’t think she’d ever even kissed a guy before. She always said things like she just wasn’t interested, in fooling around like that, but all it had ever meant to Bucky was that he’d never quite dared to, to even—

But maybe it hadn’t mattered, in the end. 

—

When Bucky met Steph as Captain Rogers in Europe, she was taller. She was broader-shouldered and muscled, in a way that Bucky hadn’t known a woman could be muscled--not grotesquely, but. Certainly, nothing Bucky would have ever imagined for Steph. Her hair was cut short. Her voice tended towards a lower pitch, a sound that was suggestable to being interpreted either way, depending on how she used it. She could have passed for a young man. In fact, she was passing as a young man. 

Back at the military camp, she told Bucky that the whole, you know, cross-dressing thing going on had been to make the whole situation “less complicated.” 

She didn’t look entirely unhappy about it, which somehow rattled Bucky worse. 

“How did you even—” he asked, trying not to let his voice sound too strangled, and Steph just frowned at Bucky and said. “You know the job I got, right? Secretary at the military-recruitment office. After you left...things, well, happened. I was at the right place at the right time. They said it might—you know, all my health problems. Dr. Erskine said it could cure all of that, but that wasn’t what had made me stand out to him.”

“ _You’re not supposed to be here_ ,” Bucky said, and he really did sound out of it, saying it in the way he did. 

And now Steph really was frowning at him. “And neither are you,” she said, stiffly. “I’ve consulted the unit’s physician. He said—after what happened, to you under Hydra’s hands, and not just that but—well, he talked about the psychological effect, talked about cases after the Great War—well, all of that. I’m going to have you shipped back to the states before you can say ‘Bob’s my uncle,’”

“NO.” Bucky tried not to shout, but he had. 

He didn’t know he had the energy left in him, but he had. “I’m not fucking going home _without you_.” 

Steph stared at him, hard, and Bucky stared right back. 

There was an echo of something: standing at the edge of a chasm, flames licking up. _I’m not leaving without you_.

Finally, “You’re such an idiot,” was all that she said, like resignation. 

And he sank back on his cot.

And he said, 

“I know.”

—

As it would turn out: neither of them ever did go home. 

And Bucky had lain in the snow, somehow not dead, but feeling that he was well and truly dying at last and thinking: it really hadn’t mattered, in the end. All the secrets he’d ever kept from Steph, because he couldn’t bear the thought of—

He smiled into the snow, and tasted blood on his teeth. 

He had just wanted her to be happy.

And now she’d seen the war, and fought in it, and killed men, and none of it—

None of it really seemed to matter; not any more.


	2. Chapter 2

Captain America was a role, and Stephanie Rogers was an actress. That was the original reasoning given. Dr. Erskine was killed before he was able to administer his serum to a male military candidate. Stephanie Rogers was the sole recipient of the serum, and thus the sole individual capable of exhibiting the serum’s qualities of physical enhancement. She’d adequately fit the bill as far as playing the part of a “Captain America” propaganda figure, and anyhow. It wasn’t like it was possible for the USO to use a female Captain America character. After all, women could not serve in combat positions. It would have gone against their nature, their sensitivities. Their presence would have endangered the male troops that they served with. Just imagine. The USO could not use Ms. Rogers as a female Captain America, but on the other hand her grand feats of athleticism and strength could not be reproduced by any normal human male.

So. 

And when Stephanie Rogers _really_ became Captain Rogers in Europe, after liberating soldiers from a Hydra fortress: well the military still couldn’t officially allow women to serve in combat positions. 

Stephanie was the exception, the outlier, a product of military-funded laboratory experiments that could not have been reproducible under normal circumstances. Her identity as a woman was thus classified, kept top-secret and so forth and so on, and besides. These decisions had been made for the better interests of the war effort. The U.S. military command did not want any confusion cropping up, any discontent among the troops, any funny business. 

It was best to keep things straight-forward. 


	3. Chapter 3

Steph Rogers kept religious iconography pasted under the lid of her compass.

The only people who would have really seen it anyway were the other Commandos, and none of them gave a damn if she was a practicing Roman Catholic, and neither had they given a damn about the fact that she was a woman, so it all pretty much worked out.

She’d thought about keeping a photo of Bucky instead. She’d be a liar if she didn’t admit to the passing impulse, but to be honest. The image of him would have been a distraction. She needed her head clear. She was responsible for the lives of the men under her command, as well as the lives of those who would be saved by destroying Hydra’s fortified bases and weapons stores. She couldn’t let herself by thrown off by getting overly emotional about any one thing.

Which was how she knew she’d made a mistake when she allowed Bucky to stay and join her team, when it was clear as daylight that he should have been sent back stateside to recover. She knew it everyday she looked at him: she’d made a mistake, even when he saved her hide more than once. She’d made a mistake, and everyday, she ignored it. She shoved the thought under the carpet. Crushed it under her heel.

She knew it everyday that Bucky looked at her when he thought she wasn’t looking back.

She knew that she’d made a mistake.

—

Of course Steph knew that Bucky was in love with her.

Of course she knew.

But in the old days there’d been so much baggage associated with the idea of “settling down with a fella” and Steph hadn’t—she’d just wanted to be who she was, and figure out what she was doing in her life, and Bucky deserved the chance to do the same. And anyway Bucky deserved the chance to find a girl who was some kind of right girl for him—

Steph Rogers was sick all the time, and when she wasn’t sick she was splitting time between working and art classes.

She wasn’t girlfriend material.

She knew she wasn’t.

She didn’t want to go out on dates, or be presented with flowers, or to kiss and cuddle for the sake of kissing and cuddling.

She just wanted to be able to be herself, and she wasn’t right for Bucky. She knew she wasn’t.

And after she became Captain Rogers, she got even worse.

She looked like she could have been a man. An uncommonly pretty man, maybe, but a man all the same.

So she didn’t know why Bucky kept looking at her the way he did.

She really didn’t.

—

Captain Rogers kept an image of the Saint Joan of Arc in her compass.

The thing was: Steph was religious, sure, but maybe not in any of the really traditional senses of the word. She didn't go to church regularly. She didn't go to confession. Maybe those were supposed to be the things that counted, but not the way it'd played out in her book. She was an eccentric artist. She was allowed an odd quirk or two. 

Steph remembered stories. 

She remembered role models, and looking towards others for the idea of what she could be, if only she tried hard enough. 

She remembered Joan of Arc, and every morning when she woke up and breathed in the unfamiliar smells of the London accommodations she and the Commandos where staying in between missions, or else the bitter wintry cold of the open air permeating their tents out in the field, every day she prayed: that _Jeanne d’Arc_ lead her so that more good came from her actions than harm.

She'd look up at unfamiliar ceilings or canvas tent and pray that she, Stephanie Rogers, despite having had no particular military tactical training, despite having been an artist in Brooklyn, despite being a woman—she prayed that she find the wisdom to make the correct decisions, and to follow the counsel of those best qualified within her unit.

And then, when she saw him coming out for breakfast in the mornings, something like darkness ringing his eyes even in morning sunlight, she prayed for Bucky.

She held herself tall and straight-backed, and did not look at Bucky, and she prayed. 

She prayed that he would survive the war, even if she herself did not.

She prayed and prayed.

—

And then Bucky fell, anyway. 

—

After the loss of Bucky, Steph, for the first time, tried to drink to forget, and then found that she couldn't. 

After the loss of Sergeant Barnes, Steph stopped praying, for a long while.

Of course, she stopped doing a lot of other things too.

When she made the plans to take Hydra's last fortress, she stopped caring if she lived.

She stopped caring if enemy soldiers gunned her down while, like a fool, she rode through its front gates. 

She could't bring herself to do anything more than find an isolated location to crash-land Hydra's aircraft, because suddenly the air was too heavy, her own body was too heavy, and she'd... she'd completed her mission. The last remnants of Hydra were gone, and she just wanted...

She was so tired.

She had been so tired, for so very long.  

—

She knew, in her heart: she should not have fallen in love with Bucky Barnes.

_She should not have._

And yet.

She had, anyway.

And she knew. She _knew._

If only she had sent him home:

He would have lived. 

—

All she'd ever wanted was for him to live. 


	4. Chapter 4

It wasn’t long after being thawed out that Steph was set up for SHIELD mandated mental health counseling: for what they were calling “post-traumatic stress disorder,” but as far as Steph could see it they seemed to be concerned with her mixed bag of rage and guilt and profound, sometimes almost debilitating feelings of depression. Life wasn’t exactly great. 

A lot of days, particularly in the beginning, she wished they’d left her under the ice. 

Some days, she couldn’t even get out of bed: not even crying or anything of that nature, just. Just feeling everything coiled heavy inside of her, and unable to bring herself to face anything of that strange and unknown world. 

It felt like a struggle to live. 

But with time: things did become better. 

Particularly after the battle in Manhattan, and finally have the opportunity to be—to be useful again, and to connect, in a way, to other people again. 

And then after moving to DC, she became involved with a meditation program specifically aimed at helping those with PTSD. Between that, and the on-going counseling, and the slow, onwards passage of time: things seemed to get better.

She started taking long runs around the National Mall. 

She regularly visited Peggy.

She made friends with a veteran working for the VA hospital, Samantha “Sam” Wilson. 

She started praying again. 

She thought: she was getting better.

And then she saw Bucky, alive somehow, and yet also perhaps worse off than dead, and something in her heart seemed to collapse. 

—

On the Project Insight helicarrier, Bucky lunged for her, and then with her pinned under him, he pressed the muzzle of a gun to her head. 

“ _You’re my mission_ ,” he snarled.

With the noise and shudder and heat and smoke of the broken helicarrier all around them—all Steph could see was Bucky. Bucky who was not Bucky. She shut her eyes for a moment, and then opened them again to look at him. 

She couldn’t shake from her head: the wounded animal look that had been on his face when she’d jumped down to where he’d been pinned under the fallen beam.

She couldn’t shake from her head: the wounded animal sound of his voice, as he crouched over her, gun pressed to her temple. 

She was crying, but her voice was steady. 

“Then do it,” she said. “‘Cause I’m with you, until the end of the line.” 

The last thing she’d remember seeing before hitting the water was the way Bucky’s face seemed to collapse with her words, something like horror and fear and grief coming into his eyes.

But by that time all she could bring herself to think was that: she would have died for Bucky, if that could have changed anything. She would have died for him.

The impact of the water was nearly a relief.

She let go. 

—

When she came to, she was lying on the bank of the Potomac. 

Eventually, she realized that she was not alone, and that was when she forced herself to sit up. For a moment, she could not even see anything for the pain of the motion, her torso feeling like it was on a fire. Then her vision finally cleared enough for her to see Bucky: standing over her, favoring his right arm. 

“I remember my mission, now,” he said. He was looking at her, but somehow his eyes were so distant. He swallowed, and his face was sorrowing and empty. “My mission was ‘that you would be...happy,’ but. I don’t know what that means. I don’t understand what that means.”

Steph looked up at Bucky, and she could feel the knot of grief in her chest like physical pain. She could not stop it when she began to cry then. She could not. She covered her face and her shoulders shook with her grief. 

“Oh Bucky,” she said. “Oh, Bucky.” 

And after a while.

After a long while, it felt, she finally had made herself stop. She wiped at her face with her hands. She looked up, and thank God, thank God Bucky had not gone. She was not sure she could bear it to see him gone again. 

But then she thought: she had to. 

She had to, for his sake. 

“Get out of here,” she said. “Get out of here, and protect yourself. They’ll lock you up if they find you. Interrogate you. I won’t be able to protect you from it, except like this. Get out of here: and I’ll be happy.” 

Bucky was gone by the time Nick and Kolya and Sam finally found Steph laying on the river bank, staring up at the sky, arms at her side. 

“Oh, Steph,” Sam said, and took her hand and held it gently while they waited for the paramedics to arrive. 

—

Sam stayed with Steph for a while at the hospital, and so did Kolya, until Steph smiled at them and said: she’d be fine. She was fine. 

She just needed rest. 

She’d be fine. 

After they left, Steph dozed for a while. 

When she woke again, her room was quiet. 

Peaceful. 

As Steph lay in the hospital bed, looking out the window at the sky through the blinds she thought: 

She’d wait forever for him.

She’d wait forever.


End file.
